Topic > economics

Google has enough excess billions laying around that they can pay the world’s brightest minds to just think for them. Famed Berkeley economist Hal Varian moonlights as Google’s chief economist and responded to Pew’s recent call on tech experts to predict what happens when robots begin to automate the current crop of existing jobs.

Dan Johnson, the economics professor known for his remarkably accurate sports predictions, is at it again. Today, the Colorado College professor released his prognostications for the 2012 Olympics Games in London.

Amgen’s anemia rollercoaster — Biotechnology titan Amgen may have dodged a bullet when a study released Thursday showed that its anemia drug Aranesp didn’t shorten the lives of patients, after several other studies had suggested the opposite. But its anemia franchise isn’t out of the woods yet. A Wednesday report in the Journal of the American Medical Association revealed that for-profit dialysis clinics prescribe far higher doses of anemia drugs to their patients than do their non-profit counterparts, suggesting a profit motive behind the overuse of drugs that have been linked to cardiovascular problems at high doses.